Strange Storm as Wide as Earth Appears on Neptune The bright tempest is the first ever spotted near the planet’s equator, raising questions about how it formed and persisted.

From National Geographic

Neptune’s wild, windy weather has taken a turn for the worse, with a new storm erupting in a surprising spot near the beautifully blue planet’s equator.

Estimated to stretch roughly as wide as Earth, the young storm system is a big, bright cloud that’s probably raining methane ice into the planet’s interior. In recent images from the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the cloud appeared to brighten between June 26 and July 2, and it was still roiling as recently as July 25.

Though storms have been seen evolving on Neptune before, such a massive storm has never been seen near Neptune’s equator—the planet’s bright stormclouds generally appear to cluster closer to the poles.

“This one is weird, because it’s really big and it’s not dark. It’s bright, and the bright stuff is probably sort of like cirrus clouds on top of a thunderstorm that’s underneath,” says Bryan Butler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “And it seems to be staying steady, for it’s been a month or something now.”

Read more: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/new-storm-neptune-spot-keck-space-science/

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